


Coming Home

by aohatsu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Three Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles comes home after three years of learning to understand magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Black_Tea_and_Bones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Tea_and_Bones/gifts).



Words have power, because words can kill, and words can heal, and that's the way power is judged.   
  
Words aren't magic though, and despite all the power they carry, _abracadabra_ will never be able to do a thing to hurt or save anyone. It isn't what he'd been expecting when he'd said _see you, man_ to his best friend, and ridiculously shook the hand of the girl he'd had a crush on since he was in single-digits. It isn't what he'd thought he was going to learn when he hugged his father in the middle of a crowded airport, and boarded a plane to Guatemala because Deaton said _they’ll teach you_. It wasn't even close.   
  
He thought, foolishly, that he was going to be waving fairy dust and maybe have a wand fashioned out of an old tree, and learn all these cool latin phrases, and while he does get to learn lots of latin (and how to pronounce it all correctly, because mispronouncing a word has a bitch of a consequence), and gets to use earth, wood, dirt, bar, grass—everything in nature you can think of—it's a long stretch from Hogwarts.   
  
He spends the end of the world at Tikal with a woman named Maria, who smiles with her teeth while teaching Stiles to place his hands on the stones that form the temple, and teaches him to feel the way it breathes under his palm, the way it speaks without words, and performs a kind of magic he’d never realized was magic.  
  
He summons his first quake in the Paten Basin, and scares the crap out of some of the natives, even though he barely makes the ground move. It’s the greatest feeling he’s had since leaving his dad, Scott and Lydia in that airport though, and he ends up sleeping through the apocalypse because he’s exhausted afterwards. He wakes up to find Maria's smiling face, and listens to the way she says, "Se trata de un nuevo mundo. We must find it again, now,” because she likes to talk in riddles.

He learns to read paintings by trailing his fingers over the long strokes of paintbrushes long ago destroyed, learns to take in the emotion sculpted into the Venus de Milo, the hard ache, and sometimes it overwhelms him to tears, and to laughter, and he walks out of Musée du Louvre only to get lost in the streets of Paris because his thoughts are somewhere far away, more than two thousand years ago, and he doesn’t realize he wasn’t there until someone walks out of a bar and bumps into him, snapping him out of it.   
  
He learns to stop moving so fast, and he feels the earth under and over and around him, and he learns what magic is, and how to breathe it, how to use it. It’s not waving a wand around, or fancy words, not so much as it is using everything that’s around you.  
  
He hesitates to call himself a witch, but when he meets a man who smiles with white eyes and calls him a <i>vörösvérsejt gyermek a hold</i>, it's hard to smile and shake his head, because he thinks of Scott, and Allison, and Derek, and a pack of wolves he hasn't seen in three years, and knows that’s exactly what he is.

 

  
  
His boots crunch the gravel underneath his feet as he climbs off the plane, jumping on the asphalt and grabbing his backpack with a grin from the metal cart carrying all the bags. He hadn't brought much; travelling anywhere your feet carry you doesn't lead you to carry more than you need.   
  
He calls his dad from a payphone in the airport, leaning against the glass and smiling as it rings, because it’s been almost four years since he’s been home. He thinks that he should get a cellphone, maybe, because he’s planning to stay.   
  
"Sheriff Stilinski," the voice answers, sounding weary and tired, like he's just come off a shift and is dreading going back in, but when duty calls, his father always picks up the line, picks up his gun, picks up his badge. As a child, following his mother's death, Stiles' had loved his father for that, and he’d been terrified because of it too. Now it makes him grin fondly, and he responds, "Hey Dad, think you can spare a few hours to pick up your long lost kid up from the airport? I'm kind of stranded."

There’s a commotion across the line and Stiles laughs and answers when his dad asks why he didn’t say he was coming home, “I didn’t know I was.”  
  
It’s true, in a way. He knew where he was going when he boarded the plane, but not when he walked in the airport. There was something tugging him, when he looked at the board, and had the choice between Denmark and Los Angeles, and he’d picked L.A.

When his dad gets there, he gives Stiles a long look, and then grabs him roughly by the shoulders and pulls him in for a hug. Stiles hadn’t remembered how much he missed these—but he definitely had, and he’s glad he’s home.

It isn’t until they get out of the car and Stiles is climbing the steps into their house that something settles in his stomach though, and he knows that he’s not going to be leaving again, not very soon, and not for very long even if he does. This is home, and it makes sense that everything seems to have come full-circle, pushing him back to it.

Scott is in the kitchen, with Allison and Isaac, interestingly, saying something about a barbeque (Stiles wouldn’t say no to that), before he’s getting hugged by Scott too, and then Scott says, “Dude, I’m so glad you’re back.”

Stiles grins and hugs back, and then says, “Me too, man.”

They spend hours talking, and Stiles doesn’t remember spending too much time with Isaac before he left, but he seems to fit in well now, almost seamlessly, but for the slight awkward start. He’s a good sport though, and Allison is quick to laugh, and somehow it all seems natural, like they were all friends, and Stiles hasn’t even been gone for that long, instead of three years.

Scott laughs when Stiles says, “Bro, we have to get you to Romania some time. There is alcohol there that would get a werewolf tipsy, I promise you.”

Scott and Isaac both perk up at the idea, but Allison grins and says, “Neither of them is legal yet.”  
  
Stiles falls backward laughing because he almost forgot—twenty-one, you have to twenty-one. It seems absurd, now, but Scott pouts until Allison nudges him gently, and he just says, “Not for long.”

It’s an hour or two after that, and after his dad has gone to work—“I’ll see if I can get off early though, champ,” his dad said, patting Stiles on the shoulder before leaving—when the doorbell rings, and Scott jumps up to grab it. Stiles twists around, but he thinks he might already know who it is.  
  
Boyd, looking disgruntled, and Derek, even more so. Isaac waves from where he’s sitting on the floor, and Stiles just shrugs when Scott turns around sheepishly, like he’s just now remembering he forgot to ask if he could invite them over.

Stiles has been gone for a long time, but he knows what pack is—knew it before he left, and knows it all the more for his trips through Sweden and Romania, and even Venezuela. Scott, Allison, Isaac, and now Boyd, and Derek, they’re Scott’s pack, and Stiles thinks maybe his by association too.  
  
They sit around tossing old stories for a while, in-between ordering pizza and looking at pictures of Scott and Allison’s dog on their phones, before Derek finally asks the big question. Stiles looks up at him, eyes wide. It’s not that he’s surprised it was Derek who brought it up, because Derek’s always kind of been that way, lacking the social niceties for small talk, but wanting all the goods anyway.  
  
Still, “So are you a witch now or what?” is kind of a loaded question.

“No?” Stiles says, but it feels more like a question, even to him. “I mean, what, a witch? Do you see a pointy green nose anywhere?”

His humor doesn’t look appreciated at first, before Scott pipes up, “Yeah, right there,” and tries to bop Stiles on the nose like you would to a kid, or a dog. Ironic, that, Stiles thinks, and then laughs.  
  
“But you can do magic, right?” Issac asks after that, and Stiles guesses the topic has been breached, for better or worse, and won’t go away until they get an answer.

“It’s more complicated than just saying I can do magic,” Stiles shrugs. “I can’t make, like, that pizza float over to me.”

“What can you do?” Allison probes, and she looks interested enough that Stiles gives a heaves a sigh and offers to give a demonstration.

Derek sits up straighter, but everyone else seems into it, so Stiles closes his eyes, and presses his palms against the wooden floor of the living room, on either side of where he’s been sitting. The wood is old—not as old as some that Stiles has touched before, but it hits him hard anyway, sucking the breath from his lungs. He can feel himself in the boards, running across the floor in muddy sneakers, jumping into his dad’s arms and chattering wildly about his first day at elementary school, and his mom in the background, laughing while telling him to take off his shoes before he tracked mud through the whole house.

It’s one of a thousand memories the wood remembers of her.  
  
“Stiles?” someone says, vaguely, and Stiles opens his eyes. Four werewolves and one human are all looking at him, vaguely worried, and he breathes, shaking, “Sorry, I—uh—guess it’s different, here. Lots of memories.”  
  
He tries again, after Scott casually knocks his foot against Stiles own, comforting him, and Stiles grabs onto that as a point to drive back to, once he’s done. He doesn’t usually need an anchor, but it’s a good safety net, just... just in case. He opens his eyes and watches as the wood disappears, the shapes of his living room vaguely vanishing into dark green shrubbery, trees sprouting up where the walls should be, grass filtering in-between everyone’s fingers and legs on the floor. Allison grins and turns in a circle, but Scott jumps and says, “What the hell—“

Boyd is sniffing, like he doesn’t believe it, and Isaac is kind of like Allison, just enjoying the forest that’s grown all around them.  
  
Derek is just looking straight at Stiles, like he hasn’t noticed a difference at all.

“Okay, this is pretty cool,” Scott says, picking a flower from a bush and sniffing it before sneezing.  
  
Stiles laughs and lets everything break. It’s a rush when he does it, and his heart beats wildly in his chest until Scott blinks and looks down at the old baseball trophy he’s holding. He cautiously puts it back on the mantle.

“Ta-da,” Stiles says, after he stands, with an over-exaggerated bow that almost makes him trip and fall. He grins when Allison laughs at him.  
  
“So you can make illusions?” Boyd asks, still staring around the room. “It even smelled real.”  
  
“Nah,” Stiles says. “That’s just what this place looked like a few hundred years ago, before people moved in. I just... called up the memory. It’s pretty easy, actually.”

Eventually everyone leaves, even Scott, reluctantly, and Stiles slowly walks up the stairs to his old room. It’s just the same, except cleaner, maybe, like his dad’s picked it up. There’s dust on his desk though, and coating his rack of books and cds. The bed is musty too, but Stiles falls onto it, happy for the familiar way his mattress gives under his weight.  
  
He falls asleep like that, and doesn’t wake up until the early hours of the morning, when his father opens the door and says, “What do you say to breakfast with your old man, kid?”  
  
They drive to an old diner, one they’d always tried to eat at together once or twice a week when Stiles was a kid, after his mom died. Half the time, they never managed—especially with what those last few years in high school were like. Stiles stuffs his face with pancakes and congratulates his father on ordering the side-order of a fruit cup. His dad rolls his eyes, but he just seems happy.  
  
Stiles is glad.

His jeep is half-hidden under a tarp in the garage, and Stiles says, “What have you done to her?” when his dad opens the door so Stiles can rush in and open his arms wide, trying to hug her with his entire body. He doesn’t expect it when she purrs underneath him, and her engine kickstarts into life, a slow, happy vibration under his touch.  
  
His dad says, “What the hell just happened?” and Stiles says, “Uh,” because he’s not sure how to a spin the story of your jeep being so happy to see you that she starts up without a key in the ignition. She’s missed him though, Stiles can feel it.  
  
“Sorry, I’m a terrible person,” Stiles says, stepping back from the jeep, and approaching his dad to touch his wrist, just where you can read his pulse.  
  
“What?” his dad asks, raising an eyebrow before shaking his head. Stiles closes his eyes, breathes, and then takes his hand back.

“Come on, you can tell me about what you’ve been up to for the last three years,” his dad says a moment later, gesturing towards the door that leads into the house.  
  
“Yeah,” Stiles replies back, “sounds good.”  
  
They leave his jeep for the moment, fond and silent in the garage.

 

 

 

Stiles sinks into the memories of his old house, watches the way his mom would tuck him into bed and needle him into doing his chores, until he’s startled out of it by Scott, coming up behind him and saying, “Boo!”  
  
Stiles jumps and falls, but laughs by the time he hits the floor. “Fuck you, Scott,” Stiles yells, heart beating fast from the scare. “I mean, thanks, really, that was awesome.”  
  
“It was, right?” Scott says. “Come on, barbeque at Derek’s. We’ll be late and everyone will eat all the food.”

“Ugh,” but Stiles gets up and follows him out anyway.

It’s the same people from last night: Scott, Allison, Isaac, Boyd, Derek. But Lydia is standing with Allison and Danny is sitting on the ground, hot dog in hand. Jackson and Erica, Stiles thinks, aren’t there, never did come back. Someone else is though, a girl in a funky sweater with short hair. She smiles and Scott says, “Oh, Jessica. This is Stiles—“  
  
“Heard all about you.”  
  
“Werewolf?” Stiles asks Scott, under his breath, after she turns around.  
  
“Witch?” she calls back though, and Stiles bemoans werewolves and their super-hearing.  
  
Derek is manning the grill, apparently. Stiles steals a hamburger from him, but Derek barely glances up. It’s not really stealing if Derek’s cooking for everyone else, Stiles supposes, and then sits down next to Boyd and Danny, plopping down while Scott runs over to say something to his girlfriend, before joining him on the ground with the guys.

“Kimaradt a farkas a kezem alatt,” Stiles mutters happily when he’s done eating, lying on his back in the grass instead, looking up at the sky. He doesn’t realize he’s said anything worth repeating until he gets a kick in the shin, and notices people looking at him expectantly.  
  
“Oh,” he says. “It’s uh—it just means I’ve missed this.”  
  
“We had pack barbeques before you left?” Isaac says blankly, because, right, no, they weren’t very friendly before Stiles left, really. Frenemies, maybe. But it feels familiar anyway, like—like this is how it was meant to be. It’s a good feeling, comforting almost. This place, and these woods, were always meant to be home to a pack.

He glances up at Derek, who’s glaring down at the hamburgers like he can force them to finish cooking faster, and he says, “Yeah. They did.” Derek looks up at him sharply at that, and Stiles has to hold his gaze, until Derek has to pull away, before everything burns.

It’s a harsh, ironic statement, and Stiles opts not to go into the partially renovated home when he’s invited, because he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep the memories out; and those, at least, he doesn’t want to remember. They stay outside until it gets late, telling Stiles stories about everything that’s happened since he left—a hunter feud when Allison’s family refused to get rid of the pack in Beacon Hills, a rival pack, which is how they got Jessica, vampires that turned out to be crazy humans in the end, and the ‘mermaid question’ that Danny and Scott say they saw, but Lydia and Derek scoff at.  
  
He’s missed a lot, Stiles thinks, and lets himself sulk for a long moment when everyone is busy talking to everyone else. It’s dark, and a bit cold, so he inches closer to the fire pit, despite lingering reluctance. Derek is standing close to it, and Stiles thinks that if Derek can do it, so should he be able.

“Hey,” Stiles says, when he’s close enough. He stuffs his hands in his hoodie’s pockets to keep them warmer.

Derek nods, and they spend a minute in silence before Stiles can’t take it anymore.  
  
“So, you’ve, uh. You’ve done really good. With the guys I mean, with everyone. They’re—you guys seem good.”  
  
“They’re pack,” Derek grunts. Stiles is the one who nods, and stays quiet this time, until Derek huffs out a short breath, like a laugh, almost, and Stiles spends a second to wonder who said what that Derek is obviously listening in on, before Derek adds, “So are you.”  
  
Vaguely, Stiles knows that he’s considered pack. They had this barbeque for him, and came over yesterday, so if he hadn’t been sure, that would have done it. And Scott’s always considered him pack, Scott, Stiles and Allison. It’s a bit different, now that the others have really accepted that they’re all one big pack, instead of two smaller ones, but... but Stiles knows, in a way, that he’ll always be a part of it. It’s still surprising to hear Derek say it though. He doesn’t think Derek has ever really been his biggest fan, even if Stiles’ did run around saving his ass for the entire senior year of high school.

 

But there’d been that one time, maybe.

Stiles’ flushes a bit, remembering it. They’d been tracking something in the woods, not a werewolf, but something else—he doesn’t even remember what, now—when Stiles had tripped over an old hunting trap. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it had just been a rope in a tree, hanging him upside down until his embarrassment killed him. It had happened to Scott enough times.  
  
But this had been different, because it wasn’t a _hunter’s_ trap—or it was, but not the kind of hunter that lies in wait for werewolves. The metal tore through his leg, vicious and unrelenting, and he winces, just remembering how much it had hurt. He’d screamed bloody murder, and Derek had come snarling into the clearing, like he was ready to tear someone’s throat out.

Embarrassingly, Derek had had to gently pry the trap off of Stiles’ leg, and then carry Stiles back out of the woods. Derek had cleaned up as much of the blood as he could, using Stiles’ own first-aid kit, before driving him to the hospital. And Stiles, in a moment of questionable judgment, hadn’t let go of Derek’s arm until the nurse had pried him off.

They never talked about it, after, but Derek had stayed with him until his dad had got there, and then slunk off when Stiles wasn’t looking.

“Thanks,” Stiles says, pleased. He grins at Derek, who just shakes his head and turns around, going off to steal one of his betas for something more interesting than small talk by the fire pit. That’s okay, Stiles thinks, because he never really knows what to say to Derek anyway.

 

 

 

Stiles spends a day following Scott around the animal clinic, watching how good he is with the dogs. The cats don’t even hiss when he comes near anymore, though they’re not quite as in love with him as you’d maybe expect a veterinarian to be. Scott ended up having to repeat a semester of senior year before he had enough credits to graduate, although Stiles hadn’t been here for it. Scott grumbles about it as he makes Stiles feed the cats, but Allison visits to drop off lunch—apparently she’s working at the athletics shop three stores down the street, prompting Stiles to call them unhealthily co-dependent—and laughs in Scott’s face, telling him it was his fault for not studying.

It is, really. The rest of them were going through all the same things, and they all managed to graduate on time. Stiles even graduated with a 3.9—it would have been perfect, except for Mr. Harris, who Stiles still hates for perfectly legitimate reasons.

“Stiles,” Allison says, while Scott is eating his sandwich, and just before she gets ready to leave, “you’re coming over for dinner, right?”  
  
“Yeah!” Scott says excitedly, “You have to meet Bob, man.”  
  
“I still can’t believe you named your dog ‘Bob’,” Stiles says, unimpressed.  
  
“Bob is a good name,” Scott says defensively, probably because he’s had to defend the name before.  
  
“If you say so,” Stiles says, and lets Scott believe it. He makes up an excuse about meeting his dad for lunch and leaves, promising to come over for dinner. He did sort of think maybe he’d drive to the police station, steal his dad and get lunch, but somehow, climbing into the jeep, he knows that’s not where he’s going to go.

It’s almost like the jeep drives herself, happy to be getting driven after so long. She stutters a bit when they reach the dirt roads, but shakes it off and keeps going until Stiles slows her down to a stop and climbs out. He’s not entirely sure where he is—the woods, for sure, but Beacon Hills has more forestry than it does town, miles and miles of it.

It’s chilly out, so he zips his hoodie up a bit more, and starts walking, the dirt crunching under his sneakers.

The woods are nice, he thinks, when he gets tired enough that he finds a big rock and sits on it. It’s probably weird that he thinks that, considering how many dead bodies have been found in them in the past five or six years alone. Actually—Stiles thinks he’s the one who found most of those dead bodies. Or helped bury them, which makes it even worse.

Absently, he draws a pattern in the dirt with the tip of his shoe, and can almost hear something—a thumping, sort of noise, like people running. Or wolves, he thinks, a minute later, when there’s a snap behind him, and he turns to see Derek standing there.  
  
“Stiles?” he asks, looking around, like he’s expecting something else to pop out from behind a tree to join them.  
  
“Just me,” Stiles says, and then stands up. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Derek shakes his head, says, “I could smell you. You’re pretty close to the house. ‘bout a mile out.”  
  
“Oh,” Stiles says, looking back the way he came. He doesn’t know how long he walked, but he hadn’t thought he’d been so close to Derek’s house when he left the jeep. “Sorry, I was just... walking.”  
  
“Here?” Derek asks, after a minute, looking around again.  
  
“Just in the woods,” Stiles corrects. “It’s nice. I’ve been, uh, surrounded, kinda’, since I got back.”  
  
Derek scoffs, but Stiles thinks he’s amused when he says, “Of course you have. Scott has separation anxiety, and you were gone for a long time. Even your dad—”

He stops, but Stiles takes a step forward and says, “My dad?” Stiles supposes it’s not like the pack stayed out of trouble while he was gone, and his dad is still the sheriff, despite everything, but why would Derek bring it up?  
  
Derek shrugs, crossing his arms. “Everyone missed you.”

“Oh.” It’s quiet for another minute, but it’s not the comfortable quiet Stiles was having before. It’s awkward, like he should be saying something. He doesn’t know what to say though.  
  
“Anyway, uh, I’ll just... go...” he finally gets out, and Derek nods, like that’s what he wanted.

He only has to slow down and press his hands against the bark of a tree once to find out which way his jeep is.

 

 

 

He starts walking more often. Sometimes it’s through town, or just down the block, but often it’s in the woods. Sometimes Derek will show up like a creeper halfway through and join him. When Stiles asks why, Derek shrugs and leaves, so he doesn’t ask again the second time, just settles into the new routine, accepting it. He gets flashes, a couple times, of kids with bright eyes and hairy faces running through the woods. He doesn’t recognize them, mostly, but sometimes he’ll see a face that looks too much like Derek to not be a Hale.  
  
He lays on his back and lets the memories soak in through the dirt and twigs and leaves, and Derek will nudge him after a while, making him climb up to his feet and walk back to his jeep before it gets too dark. He doesn’t tell Derek what he sees unless he asks, and he doesn’t usually. Stiles doesn’t look often, either, because it’s almost too private.

But it’s nice, too, to see.  
  
They come out of the woods once, Derek’s house standing up tall, new paint already starting to chip. Derek hesitantly offers dinner, but Stiles doesn’t want to go in. The deaths in the woods aren’t really any worse than the ones you see anywhere else, but this house—this house burned down with eleven people inside, and Stiles doesn’t want to see it.

They sit in his yard instead; talk about the pack, Scott’s terrible dog-naming choices, the reason Erica left, and how it’s not Derek’s fault, or how his dad came over once, and asked Derek if he knew where Stiles was.  
  
Stiles sighs, says, “I just didn’t have a phone for a while there.”  
  
Derek shrugs, but then says, kind of like he’s annoyed, “He thought I was lying.”  
  
Stiles snorts, getting a look for it, and then says, “My dad always knew we hung out with you in high school, but he never really knew why. I don’t blame him for asking.”

“We didn’t hang out,” Derek says.  
  
“Whatever, we were together all the time. Which was weird, let’s face it, I was a high school kid with perfect grades and relatively average lacrosse skills, and you were the creepy murder-suspect dude who lived alone in the woods.”  
  
There’s a long pause, before Derek says, incredulously, “Average lacrosse skills?”  
  
“Ugh,” Stiles says, and throws his empty soda can at Derek’s head, only Derek catches it, ruining the effect. “Shut up,” Stiles continues, “I was great at lacrosse. There were just multiple werewolves on my team. How do you keep up with that? How?”

“You never did want the bite, did you?” Derek asks, and he sounds... sad, almost. Or wistful, maybe.  
  
Stiles scrambles up, knocks a hand into Derek’s knee, and shakes his head. “I didn’t, but it’s not like I don’t think you and Scott and everyone else—I mean—I get it, the advantages of being like you. And, you know, I kind of did, actually, want it for a while. There was so much shit to deal with back then, and it was hard to keep up. But then there was,” and he looks at Derek, hopes he understands, “stuff that only I could do, because I wasn’t a wolf. It just... it wasn’t me, you know?”  
  
Derek’s looking at him weirdly now, and Stiles realizes his hand is still on his knee. He pulls it back, and scratches the back of his neck, rocking on his knees to cover up how awkward he feels. “Anyhow, if I’d decided to turn or whatever, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.” He gestures with his hands, and lets a burst of air rush through the trees, and swirl down to meet them where they’re sitting on the ground. It dies off after a moment, leaving him and Derek alone again.  
  
“You’re good at it,” Derek says, suddenly, and the compliment throws Stiles off balance.

“At magic?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Stiles fidgets for a second, and then bites the proverbial bullet and leans in, meaning to kiss Derek before he loses his nerve. Derek doesn’t move back, but he does startle, and Stiles ends up smashing his mouth against his chin instead, and feels the brush of lingering stubble before he pulls backward.  
  
“Sorry, that was, uh,” he tries to say, to save face, except Derek interrupts and says, “That was terrible.”  
  
“Hey,” Stiles protests. “I know how to kiss, that was just—“  
  
“Terrible,” Derek says again, but he has a stupid sort of smile on his face. Or no, not a smile, more like a smirk, and Stiles narrows his eyes in response. “Try it again,” Derek says, still smirking and definitely not moving.  
  
Stiles crosses his arms defiantly and says, “No way, man, you so lost your chance. Totally ruined the mood.”  
  
Derek rolls his eyes, and says, “Alright,” before getting up to stretch.  
  
Stiles follows his example, scrambling up to his feet and wiping the grass off of his knees, only Derek actually starts walking away, towards his house, like he really is okay with the whole no-kissing thing, and just wants to go watch television or something. Stiles doesn’t think about it, just follows Derek into the house, but his hand clutches the doorway, and he gets the memories quick and fast.  
  
There’s a piano in the corner of the brightly lit room, and two kids picking at the keys slowly, the sounds ringing through the room, through the house. “Move,” the girl says, flourishing her wrist to reach a key. The boy, smaller than her, scoots down the bench, but keeps pushing at the keys in something akin to a song, if slow and choppily played.

It’s nothing special—it’s hardly even music, just the sounds of kids pushing keys on a piano in patterns they think are pretty, but Stiles can’t stop looking, and Derek is standing stock still in front of him, his hand still on the doorknob, almost shaking but utterly still at the same time.  
  
It disappears slowly, like letting out a long breath while trying not to make a sound. There isn’t a piano—just an old couch, a table with a half-put together puzzle and a big television. Everything’s pushed to the center of the room, with plastic covering the carpets and tape over all the wooden edgings, and the smell of drying paint filtering in even though it wasn’t there a minute ago.

“I—“ Stiles tries, but his voice cracks, and he stops.

“That was...” Derek says, finally taking a step into the room, letting go of the door. “Laura.”

Stiles hadn’t meant to show it to Derek—hadn’t meant to see it at all. He doesn’t know why he did either, but it’s too late to take it back now. He wants to apologize, but can’t find the words. He doesn’t even know if he should. When it seems as though Derek won’t, Stiles finds his voice and asks, “It was you, too, wasn’t it?”

Derek doesn’t look back at him until he shakes his head, and lets go of his grip on the doorknob. “Yeah,” he says, looking at Stiles. There’s another silence, a pause that Stiles doesn’t know how to break, for all that everyone tells him he talks too much; for all that he feels like he should know how.

“I’ll, uh,” Derek says, finally, “make dinner? If you want. To stay, I mean. Do you want to stay?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and then breathes, and steps into the room, plastic crinkling under his sneakers. “Yeah, if you—I mean, yeah, thanks. I’ll stay.”

He even manages to almost kiss Derek again, somewhere between burnt casserole and Scott’s crazed phone call that someone kidnapped Bob. He hits his head on the table, but Derek yells, “Stiles, let’s go!” and he gets up, and spares one last look around the kitchen, but shakes his head when it starts to feel too hot, and runs out the door to jump in the passenger side of Derek’s camaro, and go help find Scott’s dog.


End file.
